


If Not Now, When?

by CatticusFinch



Category: Political RPF
Genre: Current Events, Italy, Legal Drama, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-16
Updated: 2011-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatticusFinch/pseuds/CatticusFinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi relaxes with a confidante in his villa.  Outside, thousands of protesters chant for his resignation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Not Now, When?

“It is not every day you have so many wild women outside your villa, is it Conti?”

“Certainly not, Silvio. But protesters are not the kind of wild women I, personally, would prefer.”

Outside, the cries of “Se non ora, quando?” continued to ring out. What had begun with just a few hundred protesters weeks ago had erupted into a few hundred thousand seemingly overnight. Women and men marching together, demanding that the most powerful man in the country resign, to repair the shame he had caused to all of Italy.

“It is something in the air, Conti. Everywhere, everyone is protesting. At this rate the entire world will be up in arms before too long.”

“It’s not a joke. They are going to take you to trial Silvio. I know you don’t think so, but they will.”

“Will do what? Please explain what they will do to me? I am the prime minister! They tried to take me to court for finances, they said I bribed a lawyer, cazzo, nothing became of that, and nothing will come of this. You wait and see.”

The two men step away from the window, letting the curtains fall and obscure the crowd outside. Steps. More steps. They come to a drawing room, decked out in sumptuous reds and blacks. The room smells of liquor, leather, and cigar smoke, of all of the stereotypes of masculine power. Seats are taken. Drinks are poured, the crisp mezzaluna swishing lazily around the thick crystal tumblers.

“How did it come to this Silvio? I know, as long as I have known you, you have loved the exciting life. Money, cars, women, so many women, but always you enjoyed carefully. That is how you got to be who you are. Now they say one of your women was a girl, a seventeen-year-old girl? How do you let something like that happen to you? They say your parties are bunga bunga? I did not even know what that meant, my secretary had to look it up.”

The two men lean in close, as if to share a secret. Grey eyes, the eyes of an interrogator, stare deeply and accusingly into dark brown ones.

“Tell me Silvio. Tell me the truth now. Did you have sexual relations with that girl? Did you sleep with that figlio maledetto?”

The Prime Minister’s dark eyes crinkle into a smile.

“Now, I couldn’t tell you that, they’d try and make you testify, Conti. In all honesty, I am sure I have no recollection of this incident the people have become so set on insisting I took part in.”

The Prime Minister’s smile thinned as he took a drink.

“That is, if they can even take me to a trial. I am the Prime Minister; they cannot just force me to go before a judge, like some common thief! No. There are laws against that, and rightly so.”

Suddenly, there’s a knock and the sound of an opening door. Both men turn to see a young aide, holding a sheet of paper in his trembling hand. The aide hands the paper to the Prime Minister.

“It’s an indictment, sir. The Constitutional Court has just overturned the law granting immunity to political officials. They want to see you in court in two months….”

The aide begins to stammer, realizing he has overstepped his bounds, and heads for the door. The man with the grey eyes follows him, stopping at the door to give his old friend and the leader of his country one last piercing look. The sound of the door shutting barely precedes the crash of a thick glass tumbler filled halfway with mezzaluna against the wall.

The Prime Minister tightens his grip on the paper, his hands tightening until the veins stand out, until his hands are practically pulling the paper apart. He crosses back to the window, and pulls back the curtains.

In the crowd, a cheer is beginning to ripple through, a sense of excitement, as each protester instinctively understands that something has just changed. The cheer turns into a roar, as the full news of what has just happened in a courtroom six hundred kilometers away is fully understood. The roar is primal, a thing of ancient times, the roar of a crowd hungry for the blood of a condemned man. “Se non ora, quando?” twists itself from a cry for justice to a cry of victory.

Through the window, the Prime Minister watches the crowd. For a minute, then two, then five, he does not move. Then, slowly, he reaches his hand out for the windows latch and throws the window open. The full sound of the crowd hits him, like a wave crashing down on a beach. The Prime Minister smiles. He takes the piece of paper, the indictment, and slowly and methodically tears in half, then in fourths, then eighths, then sixteenths. He throws the neatly torn pieces of paper out the window, letting the wind carry them away towards the crowd chanting for his head.

“If not now, when?”

The Prime Minister smiled again. If Silvio Berlusconi had anything to say about it, “when” would be a very long time away indeed.


End file.
